


An Alternative

by dancing_with_delilah



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist, The Muppets - All Media Types
Genre: Comedy, Dark Comedy, Drama, Manga & Anime, Satire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29256690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancing_with_delilah/pseuds/dancing_with_delilah
Summary: Set after episode 25, season 1 of Blue Exorcist. The world is as we left it. This time, Rin has to save his brother's back. Maybe it won't even matter in the end, though. somewhat satirical.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	An Alternative

After fifteen years it had all come to this.  
For fifteen long, excruciating years, all those who were in on it waited with bated breath. Fifteen years of Christmas-birthdays. Fifteen years of secrets. Fifteen years’ worth of silver-vine-sake. And fifteen years full of well-meaning deception. 

And here they were.

All three of them.

Father, his son and his son. 

But family reunions, as many of us can surely attest to, are not always sweet. They can be bittersweet reminders that our blood does not define us. Our genes, the same nose passed from mother to child to child- the superficial nature of it all reaffirmed through long awaited reconciliation. This was a lesson Rin had learned the hard way- the hardest way, even. 

And yet, it was a truth that for all his life he had tried to manufacture. Rin didn’t always know about his blood. He didn’t know what caused his outbursts, or why the words of the children at recess “demon child, demon child…” burned with a venom for which he had no name, no concept of outside of himself, no foundation from which to build his understanding. 

He was here now, though. Fifteen years old atop a school he had so recently begun to consider his home. With his new family- his friends. All of them in danger because his mother had dared to dream and his father had dared to act on it. His brother was in front of him, the blue flames he was all too familiar with encompassing his body. Rin knew. It didn’t take longer for the rest of them to figure it out, either. This wasn’t Yukio. It was their father. Not their old man, not pops, not the old fart: their father.  
The world was closing in on them- all of them. There was one viable solution, Rin had been made sure of it. Either Yukio alone died, or they all did. For fifteen years Yukio had hid his training from his brother. Even now, he’d hidden the signs that he too had begun to experience the same demon blood as his brother as he was coming of age. All of it had been to protect Rin, though. Yukio had sworn to it, and Rin knew he had to return the favor. 

Inside, Yukio could hear his brother’s cries. They were faint echoes in the distance, the sound coming from inside and outside all at once. Behind him, the noise was louder. All his doubts, the jealousy and hurt were speaking for themselves, begging to at last overtake him. 

There was a bang. And he was back- burning, but himself. Rin laid in front of him, proof positive of what his insecurities were capable of in the wrong hands- that is, any but his own. It was enough, though. It brought him, the real him, back.  
The building underneath them began to crumble and the sky went dark. Rin turned around, his back against his brother’s as he watched all those around him were engulfed in flames. There was something off about the way they burned, though. By now, both brothers knew what it looked like when someone was engulfed by Satan’s icy flame. Yukio knew from Satan’s memories what it looked like when someone was consumed yet unscathed. What they were witnessing now did not conform to either of those situations.

Instead, it was like they were in a mirror room. Shiemi’s body, burning in front of them at every angle. There was no telling where she was or if this was really happening. It was as if time stopped at the moment she was ignited. There was no fear in her eyes yet, no sign that she was aware of what was happening of her, no sign that time continued to tick away aside from the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders as she took her breaths. 

From somewhere around them came a deep, booming laugh. The blue flames ceased-for all of them. Yukio, Rin and Shiemi. The mirrors cracked, turning to fine glass dust and blowing away to join the cosmos. Where there had been heat there was now a piercing cold that could rival that of any snow or ice. 

This wasn’t Satan’s doing. No, this was the work of something worse. Something- or someone- so awful that not even Satan could stand to be there any longer. Rin looked to Yukio, wondering for just a brief moment in time when the last time he had taken such a long look at his brother was. Just fifteen, but the last few weeks had aged him. He carried himself now with his shoulders squared away and his head held high. This wasn’t the little kid he grew up with anymore, but then again, Rin knew the same could be said for himself.  
The building shook and another wing below them surely must have crumbled to dust. It wouldn’t be long now before the whole structure would be too unstable to support them. 

Little did they know, it wouldn’t matter.

The voice came back again. Lower this time. Amused. Unnatural. It had a very nasal tone. 

The strings holding its long, green arms in place connected to somewhere they could not see- hidden behind an opaque black shroud. There was a distinct slurp sound as a small demon was pulled out of the sky into oblivion. The very same kind Rin had spent the last day of Summer vacation clearing out of the school with his friends. It had seemed so pointless then. It seemed pointless especially now that there would no longer be a school. Rin, Yukio, all their friends- they surely were going to be meeting the same fate as those pests. 

It hardly seemed fair. 

“Hi-ho, Okumura brothers. How do you do?” The voice asked as his fuzzy green hands reached out and grasped Yukio and Rin in a tight grip they could never hope to escape. 

“Kerr-meet the frog here. You know, there isn’t a word for friends who haven’t met yet. I sure would be honored to make you my friends, though.” 

Rin and Yukio froze, looking into the black, slanted eyes that were staring down at them. 

“Oh dear ...pfft..” His tongue flickered out again, pulling another demon into his mouth as if it were nothing. “It’s just that I thought staring was rude on this planet.”

And without another word, the giant green demon tossed Rin and Yukio into the air above him. His tongue flicked out as if it had a mind of its own, chasing the brothers in their fall until it had them wrapped up. The frog let out a sigh of relief. Delicious. I sure was hungry.

Finished with his meal, Kermit closed his eyes, gave his stomach a thoughtful rub with his hand attached to the black strings, and faded out of existence in Assiah and back into in Gehenna.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I have written fanfiction in about ten years and just about as long since I've read any. I just finished season one of Blue Exorcist today. I have not watched anything else nor have I read the manga. This has been living in my head today and so I have spent an hour putting it down onto "paper." I am not sure how AO3 works just yet, but here I am. Maybe you enjoyed this. Maybe you didn't. It is what it is.


End file.
